India makes more of its own weapons than ever. So what does it still have to buy from abroad?

What happens if the supplier says no?

A weapon is only as available as its hardest part to get. If one key part comes from abroad, someone else decides when you get it.

That is the problem self reliance, or Aatmanirbharta, is meant to solve. On paper India has come a long way. The Defence Minister told Army commanders on 23 October that defence production reached a record Rs 1.78 lakh crore in 2025-26.³

So on 26 October, at the Navy's innovation seminar Swavlamban, Rajnath Singh asked for more. He called it Aatmanirbharta 2.0: a second phase aimed at top end technologies, stronger research and supply chains that do not break in a crisis.¹⁵

The list of what India still cannot make

The most revealing part of that speech was a list of gaps. Supply chain dependencies, he said, come from limited domestic availability of some raw materials, such as rare earth elements, and from technologies not available in the country.¹⁵

Rare earths are a group of metals used in strong magnets and many electronics. A shortage of them cannot be fixed by building another factory.

He said some external dependencies may persist until alternatives are developed. He also named Buyer Nominated Equipment, items the buyer specifies from particular suppliers, as a remaining source of import dependence for the Navy.¹

The hardest part: engines

Nothing shows the gap like engines. Building an engine to someone else's design is one skill. Designing a powerful fighter engine yourself is a much harder one.

On 6 October HAL's Koraput division in Odisha, set up in 1964, delivered its 2,000th aero engine. It has overhauled more than 9,000.⁴

It is delivering AL-31FP engines for the Su-30MKI fighter: 63 of 240 ordered in 2024, ahead of a target of 60 by the end of the second year. With Rs 335 crore of investment it is raising capacity from 30 to 50 engines a year.⁴

A second line for Shakti engines, which power the Dhruv and Prachand helicopters, costs Rs 218 crore and is due to make up to 100 engines a year by 2028-29. The New Indian Express reported the same figures.⁴⁶

The bigger leap is still ahead. The minister pointed to a proposed investment of around Rs 5,000 crore in engine capability for the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft, India's planned next generation fighter, and to India's first indigenous high thrust engine test facility.⁴

Who will build it?

The other gap is who does the building. On 9 October the minister repeated his call to raise the private sector's share of defence production from about 24% to 50%. That means roughly doubling it. The release gives no year.²

The Navy offered one sign of a wider base. Its chief said challenges the Navy posts for startups under iDEX grew from 20 to 229 since 2022, drawing over 4,000 proposals. Twenty five contracts worth over Rs 1,900 crore have been signed.¹

What could still go wrong?

Speeches are not policy. The minister proposed an item by item roadmap with timelines, checking buffer stocks before a crisis, funding for high risk research and a Dual Technology Roadmap for technologies with civil and military uses. The release does not say any of them has been adopted.¹

We could not find an official figure for how much defence equipment India still imports, so we do not estimate one. Until there is one, record production tells us how much India makes, not how much it still depends on others.¹